This episode was recorded at the Beyond Words Festival at the Institut Francais on Thursday 17th May 2018. We sat down with Noémi Lefebvre, the author of ‘Blue Self-Portrait’ (available from Les Fugitives: http://www.lesfugitives.com/books/#/blue-self-portrait/) and Eimear McBride, author of ‘A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing’ (Galley Beggar Press/Faber) and ‘The Lesser Bohemians’ (Faber). It was hot, and there was a lot of noise in the street, so the sound is not 100%, but we found it very interesting to speak to both writers about the similarities and differences in their approaches. We caught Noémi and Eimear just before they went on stage, so this is a brief chat. At times…

This week we speak to Olga Tokarczuk and Jennifer Croft, joint winners of the Man Booker International prize 2018 for the translated version of Olga’s book Bieguni (Flights) We caught up with Olga and Jennifer two days after their win and discuss the whirlwind of prize-winning, composing constellation novels, suppressing your first published book, and the challenges of translating fiction. The superb ‘Flights’; is out now on @FitzcarraldoEds – https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/flights You can find Jennifer on twitter: @jenniferlcroft Photo credit: Janie Airey

 Something slightly different this week, as we speak to Daniel Levin Becker,  member of the OuLiPo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, or ‘Workshop for potential literature’) Daniel doesn’t consider himself primarily a fiction writer, but as a life-long member of the OuLiPo he is in the company (spiritually if not temporally) of writers such as Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec and Italo Calvino. Daniel talks to us about the attraction of writing with constraints, his journey to France and the Oulipo and gives us a flavour of how the group operates (including a membership cancellation policy that Mark Zuckerberg can only dream of). Daniel is the author of ‘Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of…